St Anton's powder healed our depression

Well, the forecast was wrong... in the worst kind of way!

It rained (as forecasted), but more and for a longer period... After 2 days of profound depression and waiting for the precipitation, the forecast changed.
Not only the temperature was going to be warmer than previously planned, but now there was now less snow on the forecast!

Patience is not my prime quality, and we were totally done of waiting. It is also always a though call to do to leave a place that got plenty of snow as a base and which can be really snowy. It is also far enough that we knew we wouldn't come back this year.
Piet and Sarah decided that they would stay and visit family on their way back to southern Germany.

We left Voss and headed to Bergen from where we booked a ferry back to Denmark the following day. We didn’t really enjoyed our evening since there was a real heavy rainstorm happening.

Fortunately for us, the weather was much better the following morning and we strolled around its old neighbour of  Bryggen.  As we were cooking food next to the ferry terminal, Amelie realized that it was kind of weird that there was nobody at the terminal about 2 hours before departure.

After checking, we learnt that the ferry didn’t make it to Bergen the night before because of the bad weather. The plan was now to drive south to Stavanger. A journey of about 200km that will take us around 5-6hours due to the 2 ferries and the typical twisted road of Norway.

We eventually got to Stavanger in time and got on board without further problem.
Since it was an overnight ferry, we booked the cheapest way to get on board. Since it looked more like an economy-class airplane seat, we stayed at the bar as long as it was open before finding a piece of floor to crash on.

After a not so good night, we were all set to drive the 14 hours separating us from our next stop: St Anton am Arlberg in Austria. From the latest forecast we checked, there was some snow on the forecast there and we would get it just at the right time.

I need to say it one more time, but driving through Germany is really not the funniest thing in the world! Even if you can speed on the highway, it still takes quite some time to drive it from north to south.

We got near St Anton around 11PM and we went to sleep with a little dust falling.
I was really excited to go check out this legendary resort, which is known for some, as the birthplace of modern skiing.

Our excitement slowly disappeared as we were climbing up the road and that we were able to see some evident traces of recent rain. After picking up our ski passes, we went up and conditions really looked shitty. The lower mountain was snowless with iced up runs.

Things got better at mid-mountain, were we saw that snow had replaced rain!
We quickly made our way next from the officials where there was already people tracking fresh snow.

We followed them and got great warm up runs!

After tracking over and over a slope next from the Kapali summit, we headed out towards the Schindler Spitze. We were really lucky as we timed our move just after they opened the lift giving access to some great couloir!

We again scoped some lines on the way up and looked where people were going.
We dropped into rocky sketchy couloirs from which a vertiginous traverse was going to a nearby couloir. We made our way there and gave a try to the next couloir where no tracks was leading.

And BOOM! We found exactly what we were looking for: an untracked steep run!

Our afternoon went from great runs to other great runs.
We were totally amazed about how much terrain was available and how awesome the snow was!

We eventually stopped around 16h and realized that due to our excitement, we had skipped both breakfast and lunch. We started our day with beer and hot mulled wine (gluhwein)! We were pretty proud of how well we managed this powder day from newcomers at such a big resort.

Since I was preparing an article about St Anton, the resort graciously offered us a guide for the following day! After we told him what we skied the day before, he had a plan. We were to start from the top of Valluga and down from it. Usually, the lift that makes it up to the top of this mountain is for sightseeing only; you have to be accompanied by a guide to ski down from it. We saw a bunch of fellow skiers that were slowly bootpacking their way up to access the run.

The conditions at the top were not the best since it had been wind blown.
Conditions were better lower.

We were impressed the day before by the amount of freeriding terrain that was available, we were now totally blown away by the backcountry terrain that was accessible from the resort! We spent the day following the guide and going from one lift to the other without really knowing what was the plan. We had again good snow higher up and shitty snow lower down. That was really cool to have someone to show us around and not loosing any time.

The sun had warmed up the southern and western aspect and the rain had ruined everything that was below 1800m. After looking at the trail map and Google Map (which now shows quite a lot of ski lifts), we made the plan to go to Zürs.

The domain of St Anton, actually connects a few different town through a maze of 97 ski lifts that you can use with a single lift ticket that goes for about 50 euros. We haven’t really ski the lifts starting from Zürs. The terrain was quite tracked out, but we found some good freshies without to
 much work.
                                             

We did another great day of skiing that we had to cut short since we had to drive back to Grenoble because Amélie was working the following day. After an (other) gluhwein on fur seats, we headed back home!

I have to say that St Anton now sits pretty close from the top of my favorite ski resorts in Europe! One of the main downside of this region is the lack of pure ski touring options. The mountains are so steep that you have to climb for quite a while before making it to a ski-tourable terrain.  Fortunately, single-ride tickets are available at Rendl.

I’m not that thrilled about going back to Grenoble since ski conditions are supposed to be quite crappy around there!

Hopefully, I’ll find something good!
evans

More Austrian skiing before the baths of Budapest!

We figured Obergurgl would be great for another day of skiing.

We have spotted a nice gully in between the resorts Hochgurgl and Obergurgl. The motivation level was low as we were making our way up the resort to gets to the good.

Even by using some new motivating strategy, we didn't made it pretty far that day! A huge cliffy dip cut our ascension towards the north faces we were trying to reach.

We turned down without getting any good turns. As we were driving down the valley, we pick-up 7 Germans who were going down the valley! This was certainly a jam-packed RV that made it out the Otztal valley!

After dropping our new friends, we made it to Kitzsteinhorn which is the resort in Austria boasting the biggest vertical drop. The view from the town wasn't any promising as there wasn't much snow on the ground!

After catching 6 different lifts, we finally made it up to the highest point of the mountain at 3000m! This resort feature some really nice terrain that can certainly make a great destination on a good snowstorm.

The top part is a bit flat and good for someone looking for open-groomed runs but the lower part got some nice rocky outcrop everywhere creating gullies and ridges quite fun to ski.

There wasn't much snow reported lately, but we were surprise to find some good snow all over the mountain (and some nicely hidden rocks!).

After an other day topped up with warm-wine, we left to go to the nearby Gastein valley. The more we made it eastward, the tinnier the snowpack.

We drove up to Sportgastein who seemed to have the best terrain. This resort is nestled high up and using only one gondola and one T-bar to serves its terrain. There was certainly not a lot of new snow around but by being creative, we were able to link few good turns here and there.

 

This morning session was the last one for this first part of my European journey. As we had 8-10 hours to make it back to Budapest, we left early to get close the Hungarian capital.

 

 

We saw the valley getting wider and greener while the mountain were now snowless until we were finally down to the plains. We stopped short on the way around Gyor (about 1.5hours from Budapest). We had lunch over some more skiporn before heading out.

As it was the birthday of Jeff on the following day, we took off to celebrate his 29th anniversary. We ended up in a karaoke bar, where Hungarian music was making it's effect on the local crowd to warm them up. We tried to joined the karaoke, but I certainly have to tell you we weren't even closed to nail the lyrics down!

A short drive lead us back to Budapest. After going around town to settle the car rental for my next 2 weeks, we made it up to Szechenyi Fürdö. This old public bath features countless pools at various temperatures, saunas and steam rooms. A great way to relax and enjoy life after a good 2 weeks of non-stop skiing.

As the boys were leaving early this morning, they packed all the stuff before going out for a gigantic food-fest at the Fatal restaurant. The service was as crap as the porting were huge!

After eating too much, we drove out of the downtown to get close to the airport where I drove the boys this morning at around 4h30.

I am now waiting for Amelie who will be landing in about 1.5 hours. The plan is still a bit unsure, but the Balkan seem to be pointing out as our stomping ground for the next 2 weeks. Here's the map of the past two weeks journey.

EuropeEstpart1 

Viszlàt!

evans